|
|
|
|
Early Warning and Early Response, by Susanne Schmeidl and Howard Adelman (eds.)
Gabriel Ben-Dor
University of Haifa
The paper, using the example of the February 25, 1994 shooting spree by an Israeli doctor in a Muslim Prayer hall in the city of Hebron, tries to answer the question if intelligence should be expected to predict violent events with damaging impact on politics in the future. The case resulted in hearings and deliberation that raised certain points of controversy that provide an excellent case study of early warning, and its link to intelligence. This study addresses itself to these points, based on a study of the material available by the Shamgar Commission, as reported in open sources. No particular distinction is made between the main themes in the hearings on the one hand, and the conclusions and recommendations on the others, as there are no major gaps between them. In addition, particular attention is paid to the linkages between intelligence and early warning, which is a natural theme emerging from the proceedings.
On February 25, 1994 an Israeli doctor, Baruch Goldstein, entered the Muslim prayer hall in the Cave of the Patriarchs in the city of Hebron in the West Bank, and using an automatic rifle, fired indiscriminately into the crowd of the Muslim worshipers during the Friday prayer (Friday, of course, is the holy day of Islam, but that particular Friday also happened to be the important Jewish holiday of Purim), killing on the spot thirty people in the horrible massacre, before being himself lynched by the mob of the survivors. The incident provoked an enormous storm of protest in the entire Muslim world, also triggering endless demonstrations and riots in the West Bank, endangering the then fledgling peace process based on the Oslo agreements between the government of Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization.
The protests threatened at one point to undermine the credibility of the Israeli government in the peace process and also to delegitimize its continued control over the West Bank at the time. So difficult was the situation for Israel, that the Rabin government agreed to the unprecedented step of an international force being deployed in the city of Hebron, in order to calm down the local population and allow it to feel the partial protection of an impartial force, called TIPH, for Temporary International Presence in Hebron.
In addition, Israeli public opinion was upset to an extent unprecedented since the Christian massacres in the Palestinian refugee camps Sabra and Shatila near Beirut, which had taken place during the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982. That event led to mass demonstrations, and the pressure of public opinion forced to the established of a judicial commission of inquiry, the Kahan Commission, which in turn forced the resignation of the Israeli Minister of Defense and Chief of Military Intelligence, all this in a controversial judgment involving “personal and ministerial responsibility”. This was the second major commission inquiry—following the Agranat Commission of 1974, inquiring into the debacles in the initial stages of the Yom Kippur war—in less than a decade that forced the resignation of the Chief of Military Intelligence, who is the leading figure in the Israeli Intelligence community.
The Hebron massacre was regarded as a horrible disaster not just on account of the terrible human price and the ensuing political difficulties for the country, but also on account of the fear that the incident would lead to a religious war between Muslims and Jews, particularly over the prayer rights in the Cave the Patriarchs, which is holy to both Jews and Muslims. Hence, public opinion again was upset and started to clamor for the establishment of yet another commission of inquiry, along the model of the two previous ones. Eventually, such a commission was established, despite grave reservations by the Prime Minister at the time (Rabin). The commission (chaired by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court and, for the first time, including also an Israeli Arab district court judge) held numerous hearings, most of which were carried live on television in Israel, initially attracting enormous attention and public interest.
When the Shamgar Commission 2 concluded its work and published its findings, there was a feeling of anti-climax and disappointment. In contrast to the two previous commissions, this one did not recommend the punishment or removal of any major figures in the political or military establishment, nor did it find a major intelligence failure. 3 Its recommendations were mostly of technical nature, and concentrated on improving security arrangements on the ground. Yet the hearings and the deliberations of the commission, the vast majority of which were held in public and made easily available in the press, reveal a fascinating insight into the expectations of the consumers of intelligence and the practical ways and means in which intelligence attempts to meet these expectations. In particular, because the commission was established in response to a single traumatic event, it attempted to some extent to come to terms with the question whether intelligence can and should be expected to predict such events in the future.
In other words, a form of early warning was very much at the heart of the deliberations. The disaster that eventually occurred was both a humanitarian tragedy of major proportions as well as a political catastrophe for the country concerned. When questioned why better preparations were lacking, the vast majority of the officers responsible for the arrangements on the ground blamed the general lack of preparedness on the lack of intelligence, or more precisely on the lack of “warning”. This raised the issue of early warning for the commission, and while its conclusions were not particularly innovative, yet they are still very important, because they explicitly address the issue of early warning, based on expert testimony.
The Israeli intelligence community is normally dominated by Military Intelligence, but it has other important organs, such as the MOSSAD, the Israeli civilian agency for intelligence outside the country, the General Security Service, which is the civilian intelligence agency inside the country, the police and other institutions. In the West Bank at the time, the primary agency in charge of intelligence was the General Security Service, (GSS) and most of the accusations for lack of early warning were addressed to it. 4 Its officials made an enormous effort to defend the agency, both in terms of theoretical arguments about the notion of early warning, as well as in terms of proving from documents that they had in fact delivered such a warning that could have been expected at the time.
The main points of controversy that came up during the hearings and deliberations, as well as the conclusions of the committee provide an excellent case study of early warning in general, and its link to intelligence in particular. This study addresses itself to these points, based on a study of the material made available by the Shamgar Commission, as reported in open sources. No particular distinction is made between the main themes in the hearings on the one hand, and the conclusions and recommendations on the other, as there are no major gaps between them. 5 In addition, particular attention is paid to the linkage between intelligence and early warning, which is a natural theme emerging from the proceedings.
1. Forces in the field expect a form of early warning, and they do so both implicitly, on the lower levels, and explicitly, at the higher echelons. Officers in the hearings repeatedly made the point—in various degrees of articulation and explicitness—that it is not possible for forces facing difficult situations to take into account ALL possible dangers and act on them, because this theoretical solution to the problem—expect no warning, but be warned against all possible threats and face them with a maximum degree of preparedness at all times 6 —is not feasible, not only on account of the lack of available resources, but also because human attention spans and creative energies would be strained in such situations beyond any credible and practical expectation. HENCE A FORM OF EARLY WARNING IS ABSOLUTELY INDISPENSABLE.
2. In order for early warning to be effective, the consumers—when these are forces in the field—expect it to be as precise and specific as possible, whereas the intelligence agencies issuing the warnings seem to want to keep them general and diffuse, perhaps simply to cover their lack of certainty, but also to make sure that nothing is missed in the way they articulate the possible dangers. If nothing else, said all too many witnesses, “this will look good to the next commission of inquiry.” 7 The Israeli General Security Service made a big argument pointing to several sentences in the various reports and directives it had issued prior to 1994 which could be interpreted as forcing the consumer to take into account the possibility of such dangers as the massacre in the Cave of the Patriarchs.
3. The consumers, not surprisingly, discounted such attempts as totally inadequate, even ridiculous. Busy commanders faced with endless problems are neither able nor willing to try and figure out oblique and obscure theoretical possibilities within a complex assessment of complicated situations. THAT DOES NOT AMOUNT TO A WARNING. They demand an order of priorities in the various possible dangers facing them, and they also expect a more precise identification of the time and place when and where trouble may strike. The intelligence agencies on the other hand argue that this is just not possible, save in exceptional cases where particularly effective human intelligence is fortunately placed. However, this is the exception and not the norm. A more realistic expectation is for the warning to be general and relate to SITUATIONS AND PROCESSES, BUT NOT TO SPECIFIC EVENTS, which are simply impossible to predict. 8
4. Hence intelligence officials argue that they can depict a general picture of the field, but it is up to the commanders of the forces there to anticipate the specific occurrences that may demand particular attention, in view of the concrete situation on the ground that they are faced with, and that this is something that is not up to intelligence, but rather to those who are in daily touch with the inhabitants in the area in question. 9 On the other hand, the latter insisted vociferously that in the lack of what they termed “early warning” they were in effect blind, lacking the information to confront the clouds looming on the horizon. 10
5. The events of Hebron, 1994 tend to confirm three major theses about intelligence and early warning which are either known from the literature or at least can be deduced from it. First, we need to be constantly aware of what intelligence can do and cannot do. Intelligence PER SE, even sound and competent intelligence, is neither a panacea nor a DEUS EX MACHINA. It is not the ultimate answer to every national security dilemma that leaders and planners face. It can help shape good strategy, but it cannot substitute for it, nor can it overcome debilitating strategic liabilities when these exist and plague policy making on the national level.
6. Intelligence as a rule lacks the speed necessary to make it truly effective as a sharp weapon in the hands of small units in the field, when these are confronted with rapidly changing political realities. The daily routine in the field supplies an experience for creating and appreciating knowledge for which there is no substitute in the formal intelligence functions. And such knowledge will never be used properly without a proper sensitivity to the transformations that take place from time to time in the political environment, nor will it be gained with any degree of efficiency without awareness to the subtleties and nuances of political change, for which the common sense and the traditional training of military commanders may not be adequate. 11
7. Finally, the most important lesson from all this may be that relying on the routine forms of intelligence is more than questionable when the problem is trying to predict atypical and uncharacteristic events. Intelligence is normally good in dealing with more of the same and with a more severe or threatening form of the same. It is well equipped to deal with risks that grow out of known patterns, which have been witnessed in practice and in some sense have already been tested. Intelligence can give early warning with relative ease about the possible or probable events that have proven to be dangerous or catastrophic in the past . On the other hand, it is woefully ill-equipped to warn about events that have not yet occurred, and therefore stem not from the experience, but the imagination of those in charge of working out predictions. When what is at stake is not the repetition of patterns or escalation of known processes, but the coming into being of new ones that have not been witnessed before, traditional intelligence is likely to fail and hence to be unable to issue early warning with any degree of confidence.
The Hebron massacre was not foreseen by those in charge of early warning in Israeli intelligence because such a thing had never occurred before, and it was not something that the imagination of the intelligence analysts forced them to consider actively. Interestingly and instructively, this was also the main reason for the lack of foresight on the part of the commanders in the field. 12
All in all, the Hebron massacre clearly demonstrates the shortcomings of existing links between intelligence and early warning, and it is obvious that traditional forms of intelligence cannot give an adequate system of early warning about uncharacteristic events that may threaten large numbers of people or entire populations in volatile political situations. It is necessary to think about reforming intelligence agencies, or establish alternative ones, in a way that would put a premium on the attempts to break with the routine dangers facing the system on the daily level. Instead, it may be inescapable to force intelligence to think in these specialized forums about the possibility and probability of uncharacteristic and atypical events in a creative and imaginative way. Of course, in the wake of such a step it would be also necessary to think about the need to escape the “wolf crying” symptom, self-fulfilling prophecies and other known intelligence fallacies, 13 as well as to improve the communications with both policy makers and commanders or functionaries in the field.
Yet all this may be too much to ask, and the history of intelligence is just not particularly encouraging when it comes to reforms of this magnitude. 14 Hence, much of the responsibility of thinking about the unthinkable or the unimaginable will continue to be that of policy makers and not intelligence officials, or not JUST intelligence officials. After all, intelligence is a function of informing and advising policy makers, but in the decision making process the imagination, empathy and creativity of the policy makers, who are the consumers of the information and the advice, play a critical role, and will continue play such a role in the face of every conceivable reform in the ways and means of the intelligence community. Given the added difficulty of even locating the appropriate policy makers in charge of preventing humanitarian catastrophes in the existing institutions of the international community, it may also be necessary to consider establishing international intelligence 15 of a mandate, structure and culture that differ drastically from the existing models of intelligence concerned with national security. 16
Endotes
Note 1: The present paper is intended explicitly to study the lessons of a single case to the relationship of intelligence and early linkage. It does not present the case in great detail, but only its most essential features. Nor does it analyze the case within the paradigm of intelligence theory as such, but only as far as the links to early warning go. For a detailed examination of the case, within the paradigm of traditional intelligence studies see Gabriel Ben-Dor, “The Hebron Massacre and the Problems of Intelligence”, in Benjamin Frankel, (ed.), The Restless Mind (London: Frank Cass, 1996). Back.
Note 2: This commission went down in history under the name of “Shamgar Commission”. In later history it would be known as the “first Shamgar Commission”, as, ironically and terribly, the second commission by that name, and chaired by the same person, would study the assassination of Prime Minister Rabin (the person who appointed the first commission!). Pundits at times made the connection between the two events, in that Rabin, in their opinion, fell victim to the same right wing, nationalist-religious fanaticism that produced the crimes of Dr. Goldstein. Back.
Note 3: This was to contrast sharply with the findings of the second Shamgar Commission two and a half years, which did find an intelligence failure in the process leading up the assassination of Prime Minister Rabin. The commission was about to recommend the dismissal of the Head of the General Security Service, Karmi Gillon, who, however, had decided to resign a few days before the final report of the commission was due. Back.
Note 4: It is to be noted that the GSS had been seen as failed in not having given a warning about the impending outbreak of the INTIFADA (the Palestinian uprising) in the West Bank and Gaza in late 1987. As a result, after that time, its research and analytical capabilities were considerably strengthened. Back.
Note 5: As mentioned before, the conclusions can be—and were—considered as something of an anti-climax. Hence, it is, in many ways, more instructive to study the testimony of the witnesses than the final conclusions themselves. Even so, it is worth noting that there is no major contradiction between the two. Back.
Note 6: This is in general the approach of the pessimistic school of intelligence, which does not believe in the capability of intelligence to avoid surprises at all. For the classic, and most articulate, exposition of this view, see Richard K. Betts, “Analysis, War, and Decision: Why Intelligence Failures Are Inevitable”, World Politics, XXXI (October, 1978), pp 61–89. Much of intelligence theory since the writing of this article has been dedicated to debunking it, with only moderate success. Back.
Note 7: The Israel habit, also known in other Western democracies, of establishing commissions of inquiry in the wake of intelligence failures, has already led to a form of immobilization, whereby intelligence officials think more of their ability to argue their innocence in a future inquiry than about the truth of the case to be analyzed. Back.
Note 8: Intelligence officials like the metaphor of a map. According to them, intelligence can depict the map of certain situations, so as to give the contours of the terrain, but the specifics of what to do in the terrain are beyond their capabilities. Back.
Note 9: In other words, the argument is that intelligence is not just a matter of the central and formal organizations charged with it, but also of the units and commanders who are at times presumed to be its consumers. As it were, the boundaries between consumers and producers were increasingly blurred. Back.
Note 10: This is not only a matter of the military arguing for the essential of intelligence. Rather, this is a common feature of all formal organizations charged with complex tasks in unfamiliar societies, which is the case also in many, of not most, cases of humanitarian intervention. Back.
Note 11: Again, the parallels with the cases of Non-Governmental Organizations that engage in humanitarian activity are striking. In both cases, in addition to the problems mentioned, there is a lack of political training, skill and experience, which is a particularly debilitating liability under the pressure of quickly accelerating crises. Back.
Note 12: And this again was quoted extensively in the second Shamgar Commission of Inquiry. Nor is this lacking in the study of failures of humanitarian organizations to predict impending catastrophes in several key cases, as in that of Rwanda in the mid-1990’s. Back.
Note 13: On these, see Betts, “Analysis, War and Decision”, and Ben-Dor, “The Hebron Massacre and the Problems of Intelligence”. Back.
Note 14: See the survey in Betts, “Analysis, Warning and Decision”. Back.
Note 15: The need to establish an intelligence organ for the international community, or that part of it which is concerned with humanitarian intervention and early warning, seems evident. At least, it should appear evident to those parts of the international community which have a realistic outlook on humanitarian intervention. Such intervention, while motivated by concerns which are by definition the very opposite of the messiness of political machinations and military adventures, nevertheless has to face at times political and strategic necessities that can be escaped only at the cost of abandoning the field to the forces of disruption, confusion and times even genocide. Adopting such a realistic perspective appears to me as one of the primary challenges of developing a true culture of early warning and humanitarian intervention. Back.
Note 16: This is not to say that humanitarian early warning cannot or should not learn from the experience of intelligence. Rather, the argument is that on the one hand, such learning should not be too automatic or reverent, but rather critical and creative. Second, it is possible that many of the points made are also relevant to the possible reform of national security oriented intelligence. Third, it is to be noted that with all the differences between the two, traditional intelligence cannot and should not be considered as alien or irrelevant to humanitarian early warning. Most humanitarian catastrophes are the results of intentional acts of human beings and groups which have identifiable strategic intentions and plans—some of these may be easily accessible via open sources, while others need to be pried out as real secrets, just as in traditional intelligence. Back.
Email this citation